MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Foundation series’

Foundation series

Posted by M. C. on September 28, 2020

The Empire becomes too large, too unwieldy, mis-appropriates and mis-allocates and fails…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series

The Foundation series is a science fiction book series written by American author Isaac Asimov. First collected in 1951, for thirty years the series was a trilogy: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation. It won the one-time Hugo Award for “Best All-Time Series” in 1966.[1][2] Asimov began adding new volumes in 1981, with two sequels: Foundation’s Edge and Foundation and Earth, and two prequels: Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation. The additions made reference to events in Asimov’s Robot and Empire series, indicating that they were also set in the same fictional universe.

The premise of the stories is that, in the waning days of a future Galactic Empire, the mathematician Hari Seldon spends his life developing a theory of psychohistory, a new and effective mathematical sociology. Using statistical laws of mass action, it can predict the future of large populations. Seldon foresees the imminent fall of the Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a dark age lasting 30,000 years before a second empire arises. Although the inertia of the Empire’s fall is too great to stop, Seldon devises a plan by which “the onrushing mass of events must be deflected just a little” to eventually limit this interregnum to just one thousand years. To implement his plan, Seldon creates the Foundations—two groups of scientists and engineers settled at opposite ends of the galaxy—to preserve the spirit of science and civilization, and thus become the cornerstones of the new galactic empire.

A key feature of Seldon’s theory, which has proved influential in real-world social science,[3] is an uncertainty or incompleteness principle: if a population gains knowledge of its predicted behavior, its self-aware collective actions become unpredictable…

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Asimov and Science Fact

Posted by M. C. on November 27, 2016

I have this uppity series of books I want to read. The current one is Illiberal reformers: Race Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era by Thomas Leonard. It promises to be quite good. But after reading this stuff for a while I just can’t stand it anymore. I then retreat to a Louie L’Amour or Luke Short western. Good stuff! But I am yearning for another escape and for me that is science fiction.

Years ago I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation. This series was started in 1951. Asimov’s Robot series was started in the early forties.

I am not particularly well read in science fiction but I know what I like. Asimov and Bradbury. A friend has suggested I investigate the River World series. That may be next.

The original Foundation series has been expanded upon both by Asimov and others. You can do a Wiki search for the details. For some reason I have decided to read the entire (Asimov written) Foundation series, then the Robot series.

In a nutshell the Foundation plot revolves around a galactic empire that is deteriorating (deterioration of infrastructure in particular!). The Hari Seldon character has started a chain of events that will shorten the inevitable collapse into barbarity from ten thousand to one thousand years. Seldon is a psychohistorian.  A predictor of the future based on mathematics. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »